Washington's blunders may have unwittingly aided terrorism
By JULIAN GEARING
Monday, September 17, 2001
Web posted at 12:05 p.m. Hong Kong time, 12:05 a.m. GMT
If I said the United States might be indirectly responsible for the horrific terrorist attacks that paralyzed New York, Washington and the world this week, you would probably dismiss the suggestion as callous. But bear with me while I relate a tale of opportunities lost.
It was 1984. I was on assignment for CBS TV News in war-torn Afghanistan, on a mission to interview the one man who might make a difference to the Afghan people's struggle against occupying Soviet forces. That man was guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Rounding a corner on the trail, I came across a Westerner making his way back to Pakistan from Massoud's hideout in the Panjshir Valley. I was surprised to see him. But he was even more surprised to see me. "Philip, what are you doing here?" I said, remembering I'd met this former British SAS soldier before in London.
Philip was adamant that he wasn't who I thought he was. But when I recounted where we had last met, he finally admitted that he was indeed Philip. But my question didn't get a proper answer. "What are you doing here?" I asked again. "Er, working for Saudi TV," he said, unconvincingly. "Where's your equipment?" I asked. "Oh, it's coming on a horse," he replied. He excused himself, saying he had to get on his way.
As I watched him walk off, heading for the Pakistan border, I didn't see the large Rambo-type knife he had hidden under his clothes. That was colorfully described to me a few years later in London, when I met his travelling companion. Rambo Philip, it turned out, was working freelance for the British intelligence services, gathering information and providing limited military help and training for Massoud. Fearful that its own men would fall into Soviet hands, London hired agents like Philip. They knew their stuff. The British and French intelligence services had cottoned on early to the importance of Massoud in the Cold War struggle against communism in Afghanistan. The American CIA had not.
As the bitter years of the war dragged on, a series of "not for attribution" discussions I had with American officials could be summed up in one word: denial. Many experts knew Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir, was the most competent guerrilla commander in Afghanistan. I knew at least two extremely well-informed "freelance" intelligence agents the CIA used to gather information on the war inside Afghanistan. They understood which guerrilla groups were effective and which were not. But despite the detailed information they passed on to the CIA, the Americans would not listen.
The governments of president Ronald Reagan and the current president's father, George Bush, channeled millions of dollars of military aid and support to the wrong guerrilla groups. The reason? Because in the Cold War scheme of things, the Americans backed Pakistan's agenda on Afghanistan. By default, this meant going along with Pakistan's choice of which groups to support. Islamabad was behind Gulbudeen Hekmatyar's Hesbe Islami organization, not Massoud. Yet Hekmatyar seemed to spend more time fighting other guerrillas than taking on the communists. And he spat venom at Massoud. The Americans were pursuing a "hands off" policy, anxious not to become too heavily involved in the minutiae of the conflict. Rather, they wanted to bog down Moscow in the war - a conflict that eventually helped accelerate the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
The enormity of Washington's mistakes in Afghanistan grew increasingly clear to those who were following developments closely. That was driven home to me when I had an AK-47 rifle leveled at my head on a cold night in 1986 in the depths of the Hindu Kush. The man with his finger on the trigger was not a Soviet soldier or an Afghan communist. He was working for Hekmatyar. Together with another journalist, I was interrogated. Our films and tapes were confiscated. Our crime? Going to interview Massoud. For Hekmatyar, combating Massoud appeared to matter as much as fighting the Russian and Afghan communists. We were lucky. We managed to escape up into the mountains in the night. Just two months later, these same men murdered a British TV cameraman who brought stunning TV images of Massoud's military successes to the world. This killing was confirmed by British intelligence who interrogated the culprits when they were arrested in Pakistan
It would be wrong to say no U.S. military aid got to Massoud. I discovered this in 1987, when I stumbled tired and hungry into a trailside tea-shop tent in the Panjshir Valley. I sat down on a box and exchanged greetings with a man I recognized as one of Massoud's close aides. He handed me a cup of tea and pointed to what I was sitting on: two boxes of U.S. Stinger anti-aircraft missile launchers -- powerful enough to blow a Soviet MiG jet or an Mi-24 helicopter gunship out of the sky. These weapons are credited with helping turn the war against the Soviet Union and hastening its withdrawal from the country in 1989. "Khub ast," the man said, grinning -- good. Good, maybe, but the arms had been supplied to Massoud by another guerrilla group. Massoud only directly received a handful of weapons the following year, 1988. The bulk of U.S. aid continued to go to Hekmatyar and other less militarily competent outfits.
America won the Cold War. But in their foreign policy on Afghanistan, they lost. Of course, nobody would argue that if Washington had heavily backed Massoud, he would be in power in Afghanistan now and not the Taleban. Afghan politics are more complex than that. Massoud is a Tajik, not from the Pushtun majority in the country. But by backing Pakistan's line, Washington actually helped divide the guerrillas, arguably prolonging the war. Even worse, Washington's silent support for Pakistan's creation of the Taleban -- a monster that Islamabad now seems unable to control -- helped establish the world's most dangerous breeding ground for terrorists. Osama bin Laden, holed up somewhere in Afghanistan, has a lot to thank the CIA for.
Flash forward in time. It's Tuesday, September 11, 2001, a day I and most people on this planet will remember as the most shocking they have ever seen. It was evening time in Bangkok, half a world away from the morning rush hour in Manhattan, and I was having a drink with a colleague, discussing an attack just two days before on Massoud -- the key anti-Taleban force and in simple terms the only man in Afghanistan capable of standing between the Taleban and Central Asia. The word was that two Arab suicide bombers posing as journalists had exploded a bomb hidden in a video camera while interviewing Massoud in northern Afghanistan. The Lion of Panjshir was killed, according to our sources, though his representatives are saying he is still alive. The country's ruling Taleban regime denied responsibility. Well-informed sources indicate bin Laden, with the Taleban's cooperation, may have been responsible.
It was in this frame of mind that my colleague and I sat idly watching the TV, tuned into a news channel. Suddenly, live footage showed one of the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan billowing smoke. An accident, the TV commentator wondered, relating how an aircraft had just crashed into the building. Then the second plane appeared in a corner of the TV screen, headed for the other tower. We exchanged glances. Two decades of journalistic coverage of conflict and terrorism in Asia, and the fact we had just been talking about Massoud, bin Laden and Afghanistan, made the moment all that more dramatic.
As President George Bush prepares to unleash retaliation against Afghanistan and bin Laden, he would do well to ponder the miscalculations and blunders that may have led the United States to where it is today. There is a lesson here for the future.
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